ACU women hope to make big impression in first LSC tournament

This is Abilene Christian’s last season in the Lone Star Conference, and the women’s basketball team would like to go out in style.

The Wildcats will try to win their first LSC tournament title since 1999, when they open the tournament against Texas A&M-Commerce at noon today at the Allen Events Center in Allen.

ACU joins the Division I Southland Conference on July 1 — ending 40 years of LSC play. It’s also the last time the Wildcats are eligible for NCAA or conference postseason play until the 2017-18 season. So ACU wants to make the most of its final run in Division II and the LSC.

“This is the last season ever to win a Lone Star Conference championship,” first-year ACU coach Julie Goodenough said. “We won the regular season, and we only get this one last opportunity to win a Lone Star Conference championship, and that’s what our goal is. I think we’ll be disappointed if we fall short of that goal.”

Kelsey Smith, a 6-foot-2 post and one of two seniors on the team, agrees.

“We’re not going to be satisfied just going,” she said. “No one really cares who goes. It’s who wins it that gets remembered. I think we’ll go into it trying to keep the momentum we have right now.”

The Wildcats (21-5) shared the LSC regular-season title with Midwestern State (21-5), both going 16-4 in conference play, but ACU will be the No. 2 seed. It’s the Wildcats first regular-season title since 1999 and ninth overall. They’ve won seven LSC tournaments.

Commerce (10-15) is the seventh seed, and the Lions are 0-2 against ACU this season — falling 81-60 on Dec. 4 at Moody Coliseum and 75-61 on Feb. 6 at Commerce.

“It’s hard to beat somebody three times,” Goodenough said. “We’ve got to make sure we’re respectful of them and put in a lot of hard work for that game. We’ll just take it one day at a time and make sure we’re ready mentally and physically every day at the tournament.”

The ACU-Commerce winner draws either third-seeded West Texas A&M (18-11) or sixth-seeded Angelo State (14-12) in the semifinal at noon Friday. The finals are set for 6 p.m. Saturday.

Breanna Harris, a 5-11 junior forward, leads the Lions in scoring and rebounding, averaging 15 points and 10.2 rebounds per game. She had 23 points in the last meeting with the Wildcats. La’Tisha Hearne and Amber Carver both follow with 8.5 points per game.

Smith is the Wildcats’ top rebounder, averaging seven per game, while Marquez follows with six.

Abilene Christian is sixth in the nation in 3-point defense, holding teams to a 24.9 percentage beyond the arc (123 of 497). The Wildcats are seventh in the nation in 3-point field goals made per game (8.7) — hitting 226 of 681 3-pointers overall this season.

The Wildcats are back in the tournament after going 7-14 in conference play last year — finishing 10th out of 11 teams — and missing the tournament.

“It was so frustrating,” Marquez said about missing the tournament last year. “We knew how good we were. We just didn’t live up to our expectations. We should have gone. We should have won more games than we did.”

Since beating WT 70-57 in the LSC tournament title game in 1999, ACU is 3-8 at the tournament. The Wildcats have lost their last three tournament games, including a 65-59 decision to Northeastern State in their last appearance in 2011.

ACU’s last win at the tournament came in 2008, when the Wildcats beat Commerce 88-82 before falling to Central Oklahoma 67-50.

That 2011 season was Lankford’s freshman season with the Wildcats. She led the team with 18 points in the game against the RiverHawks, while Smith, playing her first season after transferring from Missouri State, followed with 16 points and 15 rebounds.

Marquez and senior post Emily Miller are the only other players still on the team from that 2010-11 season.

“It was awesome,” Lankford said about the 2011 appearance. “It was just a thrill to play at such a high level. I’m just excited to be back, and it’s close to home for a lot of us.”

Lankford is from Weatherford, while Smith is from Coppell. Savannah Smith (Dallas), Newman (Celina), Cemetra Jenkins (Mesquite), Miller (Fort Worth) and Paige Parliament (Brock) also are from the area.

The Wildcats were ranked No. 2 in the first two South Central Region rankings, but might fall in this week’s poll, which comes out today, after losing to Incarnate Word 68-53 last Wednesday in San Antonio. That loss also kept ACU from winning the LSC title outright.

The three conference champions (Rocky Mountain, Heartland and LSC) get automatic bids to the South Central Region tournament, while the other five highest seeds in the final poll March 10 get at-large bids.

ACU might be in good shape to make the region tournament for the first time since 2009, regardless how the Wildcats fare this week. But Kelsey Smith doesn’t want to put her team’s fate in the region committee’s hands.

“We have a good chance of getting an at-large bid, but I would rather just win out and not have to worry about it,” she said. “That would be ideal. It would be exciting either way. We want to go as far as we can. And this being my last season, I want to play as many games as I can. Hopefully, we’ll keep on winning.”

That 2009 team lost to Commerce in the first round of the conference tournament before losing to WT in the first round of the region tournament to end the season 18-11. ACU is 6-0 against Commerce since that 2009 loss.